When I was in elementary school, teachers would assign us reports on states, countries, historical events, cultures - things like that. We were kids so we couldn’t always find, nevermind understand, original sources for research like academic books, reports, or manuscripts. We’d reference encyclopedias.
We learned that you always used the most current version of the encyclopedia for the best information. School libraries would remove older encyclopedia verisons because information could be out of date and just wrong. I remember how you could always buy one of these older versions at a thrift store, and it would be useful until you find out that some of your information is no longer relevant. Even a 5 year old set of encyclopedias could be very out of date.
This taught me how knoweldge had a timestamp. There were new developments every day in science, politics, and let’s face it - history is created every day. The latest edition of a book ensured you got the most current information available. And older knowledge was accepted as that - a book, written at a different point in time, with a different perspective that could be considered.
Enter the web.
Today knowledge is available at your fingertips online. It’s fantastic! But at the same time, there is such a thing as dated knowledge. Date stamps matter. Even an essay written before a key historical event, like an election or battle, would need to be adjusted and re-written afterwards due to shifted opinions. Knowledge and percpetions of events and circumstances are always changing. We need a date stamp on content and data to confirm that it is current, almost like the expiration date on milk to prove that it is fresh.
But what if the content doesn’t have a datestamp? That’s where things get dicey. I think most of us can safely assume that a corporate, personal or portfolio site is always current, or rather evergreen. But if a site has a design is dated or if the content seems old, we perceive it as dead and abandonned. We assume that a dictionary or reference material sites are always current, containing definitions from historical contexts.
But I think we assume differently for blogs, news and articles, and that’s good. I don't think blogs, news and articles should be updated with new knowledge and if they are, then that should be noted.
I mean, do you update yesterday's newspaper articles when events shift perspectives? Sure, you update an article with corrected facts and note that. But do you update old news? No.
That dated content reflects thoughts and knoweldge at a specific point in time. It's now a record of history.
And this is what makes studying history so great today. We now have access to records of what happened in the past, from letters to books to journals to news and more. This helps us to better track where we come from and where we are going. Previously, historical records were maintained through those printed records that survived and were preserved in a library that few could access. Now, we have data on the Web that records people’s thoughts, feelings, events and more, all at our fingertips. And there are more diverse voices sharing their daily history and perceptions of events - not a single voice curated by a publishing house. It’s simply tremendous.
We are now all writing history, in different areas. History and it’s perspectives are no longer left to the victors.
But this rasies a challenge. Which of these content creations should stay as historical record, which is an evergreen moment in time, which should be automatically updated and discard or reference the past materials, and which should simply fade away, be archived and a fleeting thought in time? Some knowledge is like the old encyclopedias - dated and needs to be retired. Some knoweldge shoud be maintainted, like reference materials. And like the paper letters and journals of the past, some of us should have the option to destroy our own published knoweldge if we don’t want it to be read in the future. It’s something we probably should debate and determine.
How does knoweldge change? In the past few months, we have seen discoveries like:
And I won't address the daily events that are shaping history. Knoweldge is always evolving and shifting - and that’s not bad.
So should we keep and maintain all content, knoweldge, and data?
If people in the past destroyed letters and some of their artifacts, why can’t we? Do we need all of this data for the future?
What I think we have forgotten is that knoweldge is living and changes. Knoweldge needs a timestamp. Some ideas need to be retired or kept intact for historic reasons.
So what to do?
- Corporate communications should always be current, or rather, evergreen. The positioning your company had previously matters to your company; no one else. It's great for an intranet.
- Reference materials should be evergreen and include a nod to the past. It's great to know the historic context of a word in a dictionary. But we assume that the most recent version is displayed. Like a map. But we want to access the previous versions too. So I think here we need both.
- News and articles captures thoughts and events at a moment in time, so they are a record of history, evergreen at the moment of publication. In a way, they are evergreen at day of publication with a timestamp.
- Social media captures personal and social history - conversations through phone calls and letters. Which raises the question if it is a personal choice to allow your evergreen history to live on or destroy it. But this is evergreen content as well on day one.
In some ways, there was charm in an older version of an encyclopedia. It presented perspectives in a moment of time. It had a date stamp. It was evergreen when it was published, telling us what was happening in that moment. It was telling history.
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